‘To fit me to be an attorney!’ said Dick, articulating each word with a slow and almost savage determination.
‘‘Faith! it would have been well for us if one of the family had been an attorney before now. We’d never have gone into that action about the mill-race, nor had to pay those heavy damages for levelling Moore’s barn. A little law would have saved us from evicting those blackguards at Mullenalick, or kicking Mr. Hall’s bailiff before witnesses.’
To arrest his father’s recollection of the various occasions on which his illegality had betrayed him into loss and damage, Dick blurted out, ‘I’d rather break stones on the road than I’d be an attorney.’
‘Well, you’ll not have to go far for employment, for they are just laying down new metal this moment; and you needn’t lose time over it,’ said Kearney, with a wave of his hand, to show that the audience was over and the conference ended.
‘There’s just one favour I would ask, sir,’ said Dick, with his hand on the lock.
‘You want a hammer, I suppose,’ said his father, with a grin—‘isn’t that it?’
With something that, had it been uttered aloud, sounded very like a bitter malediction, Dick rushed from the room, slamming the door violently after him as he went.
‘That’s the temper that helps a man to get on in life,’ said the old man, as he turned once more to his accounts, and set to work to see where he had blundered in his figures.